Flood Aid Standoff Almost Triggered Government Shutdown ~

Flood Aid Standoff Almost Triggered Government Shutdown
~

With thousands of Americans facing the approach of winter
after losing homes to flooding from Hurricane Irene and
Tropical Storm Lee, and with whole communities still struggling
to deal with the effects of washed-out roads and bridges, a
standoff between the Republican-dominated House and the
Democrat-controlled Senate over how to provide emergency funds
almost threatened to shut down the entire U.S. Government this
week. Meanwhile, victims of the flooding worry whether they
face personal disaster as a result.
The New York Times on Monday had this story about
Pennsylvania families frustrated with the country’s
inability to come to their aid
(“
Flood Victims Getting Fed Up With Congress,” by
Robert Pear). “People here in northeastern
Pennsylvania, already traumatized by the loss of their homes,
were further disheartened by word that FEMA’s disaster
relief fund was running short of money,” reported the
Times.
Civil infrastructure took a hit in last month’s
flooding. The Times reports, “The firehouse in
Falls Township was filled with five feet of stinking river
water, mixed with diesel fuel, sewage and pesticides. Before
using it again, firefighters need to decontaminate the site and
replace the cinder block walls."
Private citizens are also in dire straits. UPS driver
Kenneth S. Eisenman, whose house exploded on the night of the
flood from an apparent gas leak, told the Times,
““I’m an ex-Navy Seabee. I paid my
dues. I’ve worked since I was 10 years old. I never
asked for anything from anybody. Now I’ve been sitting
here for more than two weeks with nothing. I’m very
frustrated.”
Darlene Swithers, a home health nurse in the Wilkes-Barre
area, told the paper, “Members of Congress are
intelligent, but they have no common sense. They fight too
much. They should be put in a corner and take a timeout and
start working together as a team. I’m so sick of
hearing Republicans this and Democrats that.” Two
weeks after the flood, Ms. Swithers finally has electric power
back, the Times reported, but she “still has no
furnace or hot water. When she wants to bathe, she fills her
tub with water heated in her microwave oven.”
In past disasters, Congress has typically provided FEMA with
emergency funding authorizations. This time, emergency funding
was caught up in high-stakes political battles in Washington.
“FEMA provides money to eligible individuals and
households to help pay for home repairs, temporary housing,
replacement of personal property and other serious needs
related to a disaster,” reported the Times.
“In the absence of action by Congress, the
agency’s disaster relief fund could be depleted by
midweek, federal officials said.”
Meanwhile, preoccupied by short-term funding that
Tennessee’s Republican Senator Lamar Alexander called
“small potatoes,” the Congress has yet to
come to grips with the long-term issue of nationally backed
flood insurance. Reuters reported, “The federal
program that insures homes against flood damage expires next
Friday and is at risk of not being renewed, even as an early
fall storm threatens to inundate much of the northeastern
United States yet again. Industry executives say that if the
National Flood Insurance Program lapses, it would become all
but impossible to get a mortgage in flood zones across the
country until the program is revived.”
(“
Mortgages at risk if U.S. flood program expires,”
by Ben Berkowitz)
Hurricane Irene’s impact will stress the
NFIP’s already troubled finances, Reuters reported on
August 31
(“
Special report: Irene wallops flood insurance
program,” by Ben Berkowitz). “The problem
is that the NFIP is a disaster itself, hanging on by a series
of hard-fought annual extensions and the subject of a stalled
reform bill in Congress,” Reuters reported.
“Only six years ago, taxpayers had to bail out the
program after losses from Hurricane Katrina proved too much to
handle.” In Vermont, one of the states that was badly
flooded by Irene, few homeowners carried the insurance:
“In Brattleboro, there are all of 99 policies on the
books for a town of more than 12,000 people,” Reuters
reported. But New Jersey, which suffered billions of dollars
worth of damage from Irene, has more than $52 billion of
insurance policies in force.
The FEMA-administered National Flood Insurance Program
(NFIP), which is the only source of homeowners’
insurance that covers flooding, has been operating under a
series of short-term funding re-authorizations for years. The
latest one-year re-authorization expires this Friday (September
30). The House has already voted 406 to 22 to reauthorize the
program for five years, and the House bill includes reforms
intended to get the program on a sounder fiscal footing. But
after last month’s debt-limit extension fight, the
Senate left on summer recess without passing its own version of
the bill.
The Senate is also considering a proposal, not in the House
bill, to modify the way insurance companies must decide payouts
in cases where both flooding and high winds strike the same
building — a controversial issue ever since thousands
of claims were denied after Katrina struck the Mississippi
coast in 2005. But whatever the Senate decides about the
“wind-versus-water” issue, the two bills will
need to be reconciled before the NFIP will have a new
authorization. And given the current state of affairs in
Washington, there is a high likelihood that days, or even
weeks, will pass after the program’s current
authorization expires and before a new authorization can take
effect. In the meantime, it will be nearly impossible for home
buyers located in flood zones to get mortgage approvals.